From a logical to a theological understanding of the church: a revolution in 20th century catholic theology

The article is devoted to the transition from the “institutional model”, firmly established in Catholic theology since the Counter-Reformation, to the understanding of the Church as a sacrament, enshrined in the Dogmatic Constitution of the Second Vatican Council Lumen Gentium . The transition from “legal” ecclesiology to a truly “theological” vision of the Church was prepared by the works of representatives of the “new theology”, who were to some extent influenced by Henri de Lubac (1896-1991). In his works, he gives an impartial analysis of the “involution” of church dogma and the gradual transformation of “theology” into “logic” under the influence of modern philosophy, which raised the question of the urgent need to “return to the origins” from neo-Thomism and neoscholasticism, that is, to truly patristic teaching. His diary entries about his participation in the work of the Second Vatican Council provide an opportunity to plunge into the atmosphere of the “cathedral spring”, to present a chronicle of the confrontation between two opposite tendencies: “fundamentalism” and “integralism”. Using the language of paradoxes and antinomies characteristic of patristic theology, we can say that A. de Lubac, together with his associates, is destroying the bastions of neoscholastic rationalism.